


In Twos

by ThisCat



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Character Study, Gen, canon compliant otherwise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25099048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisCat/pseuds/ThisCat
Summary: Bird souls long for freedom, they say.Luffy’s daemon almost never has her feet on the ground.
Comments: 88
Kudos: 147





	1. Luffy and Naiah

**Author's Note:**

> Is there such a thing as too many daemon AUs?  
> Maybe, maybe not, but I had ideas I wanted to explore, so enjoy.
> 
> This will be updated whenever chapters are written, so maybe tomorrow, maybe never.

_Bird souls long for freedom, and swimmers for the sea._

Luffy’s daemon almost never has her feet on the ground. Naiah has feathers or fins when she isn’t jumping from treetop to treetop, and she’s never not moving, much like Luffy himself.

They’re amazingly similar, infinitely curious, loud and bright and loving and always so happy. They almost never argue, rarely even have to talk to know they’re of the same mind. It’s not a bad thing, the people of the village say. It’s unusual, but a daemon is an expression of your innermost self, and it’s not a bad thing that Luffy is so deeply true to himself. And even if it was, he’s still young. They might grow out of it.

The more concerning thing about Luffy and Naiah is that their limit is far wider than usual. Neither of them is willing to wait for the other when there’s something they want to see, and so off they run, ignoring the small pains of the pulling at the bond.

Little by little, it’s grown wider, and they love the freedom of that. Even as a child, they can’t stand being bound, even to each other. If something catches Naiah’s eye, she can be across the room in no time, where another daemon would have to stay close at their human’s heel.

Bird souls long for freedom, and Naiah is almost always a bird, always seeking the sky, and a sea bird more often than not.

People keep telling them to be careful with their bond, but they always forget, in the face of adventure. They have so many places they want to go. When no one’s watching them, Luffy sits at the coast looking out to sea, and Naiah takes to the sky, flying out from the island, as far as she gets before the tug on their bond pulls her back.

They are still limited, but one day, they’ll set sail, and reach that horizon.

Makino reprimands them whenever she finds them like that, but not very hard. Terrakoran sighs and tells them, in that solid way only a capybara can, to be careful.

_Capybara: Calm, reliable and social. A friend in good times and bad times alike._

Luffy and Naiah always agree, and then they always forget, and end up back on the coast, chasing the horizon.

They’re not very good at following rules. Not this one, and not others.

Daemons shouldn’t speak with other people, but Naiah can’t always wait for Luffy to cross the room if she wants to ask a question, and if Luffy wants to talk to someone’s soul, he just does.

The villagers don’t mind him much. They just laugh. Luffy’s Luffy, after all, and Naiah’s Naiah. They’re just a child.

The pirates don’t mind either, when they show up.

Benn tells them in confidence that on a pirate ship, living in the same small space for weeks at a time, social conventions tend to break down a little. Most pirates have long since gotten used to getting closer to each other’s daemons than is strictly proper.

Luffy and Naiah love it.

They see it, too, as the pirates get used to the village and start acting at home, their daemons mingle in a way the villagers don’t.

Captain Shanks’s daemon is a sea bird as well. Zuzephina is a sea eagle, with huge wings and vicious claws, and Naiah tends to shift eagle too, next to her.

_White-tailed sea eagle: Patient, observant and dangerous. A leader and a hunter, hard to put off balance and harder yet to fight._

While Shanks sits at the bar, Zuzephina flits from table to table, manoeuvring carefully between people and checking up on everyone before she returns to him, and it’s not rare for her to join in on conversations as she goes.

That’s the sort of freedom Naiah wants, to just do whatever. To have the confidence that Zuzephina carries herself with.

They desperately want to go sailing with the pirates.

But in the end, it doesn’t work like that.

Mountain bandits show up out of nowhere, the yapping of the leader’s hyena daemon biting through the noise of the bar. Confidence or not, neither Zuzephina nor Shanks actually do much.

Luffy feels a little betrayed. Naiah is confused and disappointed.

Then Luffy eats a devil fruit, which is probably the craziest thing that’s happened to him yet.

They spend the next day experimenting with their new ability, not minding when the pirates leave again without them.

The mountain bandits come back.

When the dust settles, Luffy is gone, and Naiah is left in the dirt, screeching and flapping and shouting at Shanks to _get a move on already!_

Shanks doesn’t bother with a boat, he just swims. Above, Naiah is an eider, flying as fast as her wings can carry her and leading the way to the other half of her soul.

It’s good that she is.

When Luffy falls in the water, she drops like a rock, all power drained out of her, and only her duck’s body saves her from sinking.

Shanks loses an arm, but he hardly even seems to mind. He swims back to the coast like it’s nothing, and Naiah shifts into a beetle and is carried back nestled into Zuzephina’s feathers.

Naiah can still swim, it seems, but the second Luffy’s in the water, she can no longer move.

They both shy away from the coast for a few days after that.

And then Shanks leaves, and they’re sitting there, watching the horizon, Luffy clutching at a hat that doesn’t fit him yet, and Naiah pressed against his side.

“We’ll do it,” she says. “We’ll be king.”

“ _Yeah_ ,” he agrees, because they have to, now. They always had to.

Naiah takes off towards the horizon, and she flies.

And flies.

And flies.

Until Dawn Island is a speck behind her. Until it’s gone.

She touches the clouds, skims the tops off waves, flies like she’s free. Completely, utterly free, so far out even the screeching of seagulls doesn’t reach her.

“This is so cool!” she yells.

And then she remembers she’s alone, and there’s no one to answer her.

She could keep flying. She’d give anything for this sort of freedom.

But Luffy’s still waiting for her, so she turns around and follows the bond back home.

Makino and Terrakoran are there when she returns, looking worried, but Luffy grins with all his teeth and holds his arms out to catch her, so it’s fine.

“See? I told you it’s fine,” says Luffy. “The bond can stretch too!”

And Makino hugs them both and moves them back towards the village.

Devil fruits are strange things. Naiah isn’t quite physical, and so she doesn’t sink in water like Luffy does, but she’s still a part of him. She’s still made of rubber, and so is the bond between them. It was already long. Now, it seems limitless.

At least somewhat.

She’s flown for two days, reaching the next island, before they feel the tug of it again, and she flies for quite a bit more before it becomes truly uncomfortable.

That’s fine. They never want to be apart entirely. They’ll go further when he can go too.

She’s away when Gramps picks Luffy up and brings him to the bandits. She’s away a lot, now that she can be, flying out to see things for both of them, things he can see through her eyes, or that she can tell him about later.

The bandits ask Gramps worriedly if Luffy’s severed.

Gramps laughs it off because he’s Gramps and he’s like that, just barely remembering to assure the bandits that it’s fine and he’s not.

Luffy doesn’t mind when people ask. Or, he doesn’t care. It really doesn’t matter.

He doesn’t mind when Naiah’s away either, because she always sees interesting things for him and he couldn’t stand keeping her trapped, but now that he’s away from the villagers and doesn’t have anyone to talk to, he misses her. He gets lonely.

And she knows that he’s lonely, of course, but she’s far away, and can’t get back quickly.

Which is why he follows Ace and Morild through the woods, even though Ace looks at him with contempt and Morild with pity.

He keeps following them when Naiah comes back, even though she stays with him more now, because he loves Naiah but she’s just another part of him, and they still get lonely together.

She isn’t away as much, when he’s alone like this, but she still leaves sometimes, the horizon too close to avoid, and she’s away the day he finally catches up and steps into the Grey Terminal.

She’s away when he meets Sabo and Celeste. She’s away when he meets Porchemy, as well as Porchemy’s spiked gloves. She’s away when he is saved, and makes friends.

Ace never asked about Naiah’s absence. Sabo does, as delicately as a brat like him can manage.

“Where the hell’s your daemon, anyway? You alright like that?”

“She’s just flying,” Luffy says, and explains. Sort of.

Both of them seem to think the thing with the devil fruit is weird.

When Naiah returns a day later, with stories of a pirate ship she saw on the way, they quickly decide it’s awesome instead. Luffy’s new friends are cool like that.

For as long as it lasts. Until the fire. Until Sabo and Celeste are taken away and don’t return.

Dogura admits he never saw Celeste dissolve into dust, but there is no way they could have survived. Not from something like that.

(Between getting shot and burned and battered by the waves, when they’re plucked from the sea, they’re not only half-dead but violently severed. Sabo is found first, and Celeste makes her way to them several days after, only her childhood shifting ability saving her from the burn wounds and letting her swim. Somehow, miraculously, they’re still breathing.)

(She swims blindly, knowing only that a part of her is somewhere ahead, and she crawls onto the deck before the ship even lands, and finds her other half. They cling to each other and do not let go, the bond between them raw and bleeding, but still there.)

(They cling because they know at least that they belong to each other, though anything and anyone else they have ever known is gone.)

(She settles only a few years later, far too early, but the children of the revolution must grow up fast, and she settles as a starling.)

( _Common starling: Social, persistent, and easy to anger. A good friend and a terrible enemy._ )

It’s just Ace and Luffy after that. Ace and Luffy and Morild and Naiah. They’re fine. They do their best and they’re fine.

Ace is a little too brash and violent to be a perfect big brother, but Luffy is sturdy and they love each other, so they have the time for him to learn. Morild is a little kinder, a little softer, a little more ready to admit to things she loves, but she’s utterly wild in a fight, and that never changes.

Ace settles at a good age for a kid growing up in the jungle. A little early, maybe, to settle at fifteen, but not unreasonable.

Morild settles as a tiger, and the comparison to a father he doesn’t want anything to do with is too close for Ace to be truly happy, but she’s decided, and there’s nothing to be done.

_Tiger: Proud, powerful. A terrifying force in their element. A warm hug on a cold night, for a friend._

They argue more often after she settles, but they’ve always argued when there’s nothing more important to focus on, because he is so scared and so angry, and she is equally angry and knows there’s nothing to fear. They work it out in the end.

They grow to agree more as they grow older. It’s easier, when there are people around who don’t hate them.

Naiah takes the shape of a tiger just once, after that, to run with Morild through the woods, but it doesn’t last long before she has wings again. Naiah is not made for the ground.

No one is surprised when she settles only a year after Morild, even if thirteen _is_ scandalously young. Naiah has had the same shape almost continuously for years at that point, only shifting to land, and she could only ever settle as an albatross.

_Wandering albatross: Infinitely loyal, infinitely free._


	2. Zoro and Bite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short rant about linguistics!
> 
> Yes, I know the canonical spelling is "dæmon" but that's stupid. The letter æ does exist in archaic English, but this isn't a word that would be archaic. It's a word you'd use every day. It would use standard spelling the same as any other common word, so I'm using 'daemon' even though I have the æ on my keyboard.  
> (Also as I use æ in my native language I can tell you it sounds dumb as heck.)
> 
> As for pronouns, a world like this would most likely have more of them. An 'I' for just yourself, an 'I/we' for you and your daemon, and a 'we' for you and other people, and so on for both first, second and third person. Since inventing pronouns in this case would be annoying to implement, I'm going to muddle through with normal singular and plural pronouns as best I can.

Zoro’s daemon is named Bite.

After they leave their island, they’re told it’s a strange name for a daemon to have, but they don’t agree. That’s just how it works, where they come from.

On their island, daemons aren’t named before they settle. Until she did, Zoro’s daemon is only ever just that, Zoro’s daemon. Everyone is like that, at home.

(Kuina’s daemon never settled, never got a name. Bite carries hers for both of them.)

And Zoro’s daemon settles early. Far too early, some of the adults say, but Zoro and Bite don’t agree. They’ve just never had to wonder who they are.

She settles as a wolf, with heavy paws and a menacing grin, and she’s named for her teeth.

_Wolf: Strong, stubborn, loyal. A hunter with a will to never give up._

She’s kinder than him, at times, gets along better with people and is more likely to suggest going along with other people’s ideas, but when it comes to their goals, she is just as uncompromising, and in a fight she’s equally vicious.

They agree more often than not, and argue only on the details.

Neither of them shies away from pain.

Of course they don’t. They’re going to be the strongest, after all. Pain is only another obstacle in their path.

In a fight, the limit of a daemon bond is dangerous. If who you’re fighting has a longer bond, they might forcefully separate you, or either way one half of you could get stuck somewhere, forcing you apart. Very few people are able to fight through the pain of a tearing bond, and no one efficiently.

The very best swordsmen have found ways around it.

Stretching the bond is a slow and painful affair, like all training is, and they do it, inch by inch, tugging until it’s just a little longer each year, but there’s a limit to how far you can go through that method.

Severing is a nasty word for a nasty practice, but it’ll eliminate a weakness, and so they’ll have to do it.

Or at least that’s what Zoro argues, when they talk about it.

Bite isn’t sure she agrees. They work together so seamlessly when they fight, communicating without a twitch, sharing senses so fluidly it’s like they’re not two halves of the same person, they’re one person in two parts.

Won’t they lose that, if they sever the bond?

In the end, they ask their teacher.

There are two ways to sever a daemon bond, they learn, and the results between the two can differ.

The first, the most often used by swordsmen, involves a sword. One sharp enough to cut the very air it passes through, and in the hands of a skilled swordsman, it can cut even the bond between a man and his soul.

It is sudden, and painful, and unless both person and daemon are ready and willing, it can at times be deadly. It cuts the bond entirely, but it works, if everyone involved knows what they’re doing, and it is far less painful than the other method.

The other way is similar to the training that lengthens the bond, but you go further and pull harder, and eventually, the bond will snap. It’s a far more dangerous way to do it, and quite excruciatingly painful, but if it succeeds, the bond will still be present, just weaker. With practice, they should be able to share senses still.

Their teacher won’t allow them to attempt it unsupervised, he tells them, but he knows them, and if they decide they want to give either method a shot, he won’t stop them.

Zoro decides immediately. Bite doesn’t take much longer to agree, once she’s sure it’s possible, but she’s still worried, and so is he, if he allows himself to admit it.

They sleep that night with his arms around her, pressed close together, deep in each other’s senses.

They sleep like that most nights from then on.

It is, without compare, the most painful thing they’ve gone through. They can handle burning lungs and arms and legs as they work on their strength and speed, but this pain is deeper, deeper than organs, deeper than flesh.

They can’t stand it for long at a time, and really, their teacher won’t let them. Every day they pull for just a short while, and then they rush together again, holding onto each other and reaching for each other’s minds and senses as the very connection between them aches.

It’s important to stay close, too, if they want to maintain the bond past severing. That’s what they’re told, so they clutch at each other until the pain fades and refuse to think of the comfort as weakness.

Each time it takes hours before they’re ready to continue, but they always do. Failure was never an option.

It takes a year before they succeed.

The bond is stretched fifteen meters long and feels ragged and bleeding, and they’re straining against it from both sides, shaking with it. Then, in a final blinding, stomach-turning burst of pain, it’s gone.

They fall to the ground, gasping, disoriented, hurting and scared, having lost each other entirely, and then they see each other through the painful haze of everything wrong, and they reach for each other and hold on desperately, shaking, until the world returns to being right-side-up, a little tilted now, from how it should be, but solid.

They don’t stop touching for the next three days, and don’t get out of arm’s reach for the next month, but they did it. They’re done.

There are no limits between them anymore, and they can still sense each other.

They’re sixteen.

Not too long after that, they leave the island and don’t return.

It’s not… quite on purpose. The world is a large place, and while they originally figured finding their way back home would be easy, it doesn’t turn out that way.

But they’ll manage. They always manage.

And they do pretty well, all things considered, until Zoro kills some asshole’s pet wolfdog.

He’s not sure why anyone with a dog daemon _that_ small and yappy would own a pet like that. The contrast only serves to emphasise how pathetic he looks, but unfortunately the asshole also has a marine battalion backing him up, and Zoro doesn’t want to deal with that.

At least not when he knows anything he does will likely be taken out on the little girl. He knows how bullies work. He goes quietly, when they arrest him, but he doesn’t stop Bite from snarling to her heart’s content.

The annoying little dog-daemon spends most of her time near them shivering in her human’s arms.

The asshole decides to take the whole thing personally.

Tying Zoro to a pole for a month is fine. He can live through that. Muzzling Bite is humiliating and undignified. Tying her up three meters away is just cruel.

Three meters is around the limit for most people. It’s clearly meant to hurt them, just because. It doesn’t, of course. They can’t be hurt like that ever again, but it’s still rough, not to be allowed to touch. Their nights are already bad, tied up like this, and it’s worse when they’re missing the feeling of fur against skin that they’ve fallen asleep to every night for years.

It starts bad and gets worse, and by the ninth day, sleep-deprived and starving, Bite’s muzzle is the only thing stopping them from chewing off a leg and leaving.

And then company shows up.

Better company than the asshole, anyway, who still can’t seem to leave them alone.

This company is a weird boy in a straw hat, seemingly missing his daemon.

Well, Zoro won’t judge and doesn’t care.

The boy calls himself Luffy, and he might be the oddest person Zoro’s ever met, even aside from the lack of a daemon. Being a pirate is one thing, but he doesn’t seem to take anything seriously, and yet….

It’s hard to read his emotions without a daemon to take cues from, but Zoro watches the easy way he holds himself and Bite smells his total lack of fear, and he genuinely seems to feel like nothing here could ever hurt him.

Either he’s crazy, or he’s stronger than he seems. Zoro’s banking on the former. Bite isn’t so sure.

And then, before he leaves, he turns to Bite and says, “You alright like that, though?” like talking to another man’s daemon is a natural thing to do.

Bite bares her teeth at him as best she can and tells him, “We’re strong. Don’t patronize us.”

And Luffy laughs and says, “Alright.”

Bite raises an eyebrow when Zoro asks Luffy to pick the crushed rice balls up for him, but strong or not, he’s hungry.

She laughs at him for it, but at least she can still laugh.

Luffy’s odd, and he’s annoying. He shows up again two hours later, ready to make Zoro and Bite come with him through blackmail, not taking no for an answer or even listening to argument. Zoro doesn’t _get_ him.

At least not until the pink-haired boy, with the tiny furry daemon hiding in the collar of his shirt, comes with shaking hands and shaking voice to explain.

Priorities change after that.

Captain Morgan’s daemon is a lion.

Large and imposing, but lions are cowards more often than not, Zoro knows. Still more than enough to kill him if no one gets him and Bite free soon, though, and all he has on his side is a boy with shaking legs with a mouse-sized daemon cowering under his shirt.

And then he has Luffy, and he has his swords. And then he’s free, and the ropes binding Bite are cut.

Coby is nearly shot, and he’s still shaking in fear, but he stands his ground impressively, his daemon dropping to the ground to keep the idiot son’s daemon at bay, revealing herself to be something quite different from a mouse.

_Least weasel: Small, clever. Seemingly weak, with a surprisingly strong bite. Will not throw a fight even against a much larger opponent._

The marine captain and his daemon pose no challenge, in the end.

Zoro cuts the muzzle off Bite’s head, and then he tangles one hand into her fur and doesn’t intend to let go for a long time.

“What do you think?” he asks her, taking a good look at their new captain through her eyes.

Her answering grin says it all. “Sure. Let’s be a pirate.”

Luffy’s the oddest person they’ve met in their life, and they both want to see where he goes.

The small boat they leave in is almost a comfort. It makes for a good excuse for her to lie on top of him. He has a guess he wouldn’t need an excuse, for Luffy, but it’s good even so. He’s no longer hungry, but he’s still dead tired, and it doesn’t take long to doze off like that, lying at the bottom of the boat with the weight of his soul on his chest.

They sail for most of the day before it becomes clear neither of them has any idea how to navigate.

“So, we’re lost,” says Bite. “Again.”

Luffy laughs. “You guys got lost?”

“We’re fine,” Zoro growls. “There’s nothing there for us to go back to anyway.”

Bite bonks his chin with her snout, and he can feel her laughing at him. At both of them. It bleeds through the bond and he can’t help but chuckle too.

“Do you have any idea where to go?” he asks once the wave of mirth has passed.

He’s starting to get real hungry again, and neither of them thought to bring anything to eat. They really need more crewmembers if they’re going to survive. Especially a navigator.

“Nah,” Luffy says, happily. “Ah, but Naiah can probably help.”

“Naiah?”

“Yeah! Here she comes!”

Zoro looks where Luffy’s pointing, and soon he sees the shape of a bird in the distance. One he recognizes as a daemon.

“Ah. Yours?”

“Yeah!”

At least that explains that. Zoro’s not about to judge anyone, though the thought of choosing to be apart from your daemon like that gives him a weird feeling.

Naiah is a bird of some sort. At first he thinks she’s a seagull. Then he processes the perspective properly and realizes she is far too large for that, her wingspan well over two meters, probably closer to three.

Then he stops wondering about bird species as he realizes what speed she’s approaching at. She’s coming straight for their boat, and she hasn’t slowed down in the least.

Scrambling to get to his feet but hampered by Bite flailing on top of him, Zoro barely jumps out of the way in time to avoid getting crashed into. Naiah smacks into the floor of the boat at full speed and with her huge wings extended. She tumbles head over heels, legs in the air, neck twisting all the way around and wings flailing, knocks Bite over and smacks Zoro across the face with a wingtip before she bounces like an unwieldy rubber ball and gets flung right off the boat again.

Bite is entirely bewildered. Zoro reels from the sudden and unintentional daemon contact, the electric shock of an intimacy he’s very much unused to still tingling across his face, and somewhere, Luffy’s laughing.

It doesn’t last long. Zoro sits up to see that Naiah has bounced quite far away, and now she’s floating on the water like a duck, folding her wings up several times the way albatrosses do.

She paddles up to the boat, and Luffy reaches down and scoops her up into his lap.

“Oh cool! Hello!” says Naiah. “Who’re you?”

Luffy laughs and says, “This is Zoro and Bite! They’re a super cool swordsman and they’re on our crew now!”

“That’s awesome!”

“Uh, hello,” says Bite, still feeling a little thrown, both physically and metaphorically.

“So,” says Zoro, because he hasn’t cared before, but if they’re really going to be crewmates, he probably should know for sure. “You’re severed?”

“Nah, we just stretch,” says Naiah. She laughs exactly the same way Luffy does.

“It’s our devil fruit ability,” says Luffy, stretching his cheek to demonstrate.

“Ah,” says Zoro. Well, devil fruits are weird as hell anyway, so why not. Then he says, because they _are_ meant to be crewmates, “We are.”

“Really? But you’re so close!” Luffy says.

“It was part of our training,” Zoro replies. “It’s practical, but that doesn’t mean we want to be apart when it’s not useful.”

“Eeeh, I think I’d die if I had to be stuck on a boat or an island all the time,” Naiah laughs. “You’re so cool, though! Are you a wolf? I bet you’re really strong. I’m pretty strong too, but I can’t really fight well, so Luffy has to do that.”

Bite snaps playfully at Naiah’s beak. “I am, that’s why I’m named like this. And I don’t mind boats, as long as we’re not lost and hungry, like now. Your human said you could find an island?”

“Oh! Sure! I just flew past one, it’s just over, uhhh, hey Luffy, throw me, I gotta fly.”

Immediately, Luffy stands up, grabs his daemon like she’s a ball and throws her full force straight up, whereupon she snaps her wings out and soars, like that’s a normal way to take off.

For her, it probably is. Luffy continues to be the oddest person Zoro’s ever met.

“Ah! Yeah it’s over here!” Naiah yells and takes a sharp turn right.

“Cool!” Luffy yells back, grabbing for the sail.

“Huh. Practical,” says Zoro, also getting up to help adjust their course.

Naiah leads the way, and they follow behind as best they can in the modest wind. It reminds Zoro a little of sailor’s tales he’s heard around the sea.

An albatross following your ship means good luck, it’s said.

Not too long after, a bird far larger than Naiah swoops in and nearly swallows her. In retaliation, Luffy attempts to punch it, which only results in him getting snapped up and carried away, his daemon screeching and raining ineffectual pecks on the giant bird.

Well.

It certainly means _some_ kind of luck, Zoro figures as he takes to the oars and hurries after them.


	3. Nami and Aquilo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On touching daemons, it's a concept that'll show up a few times over the course of this fic, so I figured I'd talk about exactly what it means, since it's often handled a little differently from fic to fic.
> 
> Touching someone else's daemon is inherently very intimate. You're touching a part of their soul, after all. Doing it without permission is a terrible crime, and is shied away from instinctively, but done with permission it's a sign of a very close relationship.
> 
> It is _not_ , however, inherently sexual. It'll often show up in sexual situations because it's a natural place for it to occur, but in this fic, that is not the context you will be seeing it in. On its own, touching someone's daemon is no more sexual than sharing your deepest darkest secrets with them is.

The battlefield is thick with dust.

The ground is littered with death, with the ruins of buildings and the lives that once lived in them, with the bodies of soldiers and civilians both, so many dead the dissolving daemons don’t have time to fade, but tint the air golden, a glitter of light against the smoke that darkens the sky.

Bellemere can’t take it anymore. She no longer remembers why she’s here or who she’s meant to be fighting for. It’s all lost under blood and fire.

Kalosyn still has his teeth bared, but no longer in warning to enemies, only in reaction to the massacre around them. He steps as careful as he can on heavy paws to stand as a solid warmth behind her, keeping them both steady.

_Brown bear: Powerful, undaunted. A fearless and resourceful force, fiercely protective of their loved ones._

They might have never left this place, might have disappeared here, to join the thousands dead around them, if not for the children.

If not for a young girl with her daemon as a sparrow on her shoulder, carrying a baby through the ruins of a town.

Bellemere and Kalosyn could have disappeared there, without a purpose, but their purpose found them, and they held on and did not let go. They decide on way home, when they finally find a ship heading in that direction, as easily as if the choice was already made. They would be these children’s mother.

Nojiko and Galanos don’t mind, when she asks them. They would rather stay with her than with anyone else. The other child is only a baby, and cannot make the choice.

Bellemere looks at the sea and the wind around them, bringing them home, and with Kalosyn breathing his blessing over them, she names the baby Nami for the waves, and her shifting, helpless daemon Aquilo for the north wind.

\---

Nami and Aquilo are a terrible child, always stealing and getting in fights, Nami talking them out of trouble and Aquilo egging her on. They never listen to people reprimanding them and learn far too quickly how to outsmart people.

Nojiko and Galanos don’t help either, are more likely to join in or give advice than be any sort of source for order. She’s an older sister first and foremost, after all.

Bellemere and Kalosyn were a wild child too, once, and are no help at all.

But people love Nami. She’s bright and clever and hard not to love.

Aquilo shifts freely, as children always do, a fox in a scuffle, a squirrel when snagging unattended change, a hawk while running laughing from annoyed villagers, a brightly coloured wasp to hide his expressions while she lies.

Usually something bright and obvious. They’re loud and unrepentant, always taking all the space they feel they deserve. Where Nojiko prefers to carry Galanos around on her shoulder, Aquilo runs beside Nami, or flies ahead or watches her back. Never far enough apart to hurt, but they fill the space they have.

And then Arlong comes.

\---

Fishmen don’t have daemons.

If you were to listen to the so-called authorities of the world, humans are the only creatures in the world with souls, and this is shown by their possession of daemons, which no other race can show. It’s a notion many humans believe.

It’s also a notion that has been disproven in several ways at several times. The only thing special about humans is that they carry a part of their soul on the outside, where other races are entirely contained within themselves.

Nami and Aquilo, of course, know none of this.

All they know is that the people at their mother’s door are terrifying, too large and too strong and without a single soul to be seen between them, laughing and threatening like there’s nothing any of the humans can do against them.

Somehow, even Kalosyn looks smaller in the face of them.

And the fishmen don’t _care_ about the daemons.

Aquilo is a coral snake, wrapped tight around Nami’s arm, seeking the unblinking eyes of the snake to hide their fear and the closeness for comfort, and they watch as one of the fishmen pins Kalosyn to the ground.

Nami’s never seen that before. She can’t breathe, watching Bellemere grimace in pain. That’s the one thing you never do. Never ever, not even in a fight, not unless you love each other deeply and dearly. You just don’t.

Maybe it doesn’t count, if you don’t have a daemon of your own.

Nami doesn’t know. She just knows she’s watching something terrible.

The fishman leader, Arlong, laughs and sneers about how fragile humans are, how easy they are to hurt. How could they ever hope to stand up to fishmen?

There is no choice given, but Bellemere makes one anyway.

One last time, they embrace, Kalosyn shaking himself free and putting his paws around all of them, and it reminds Nami of cold winter nights, when they’d all sleep in the same bed and he made sure they didn’t freeze at all. He’s soft and warm and oh so strong, and Bellemere holds them like they’re the only things in the world.

And then Nami and Nojiko are pulled away. A gunshot rings out.

A moment later, Kalosyn disappears into dust and nothing.

And they’re gone.

It should have ended there, but it doesn’t.

The fishmen take Nami away, and Aquilo crawls under her clothes, shivering against her skin, so they won’t try to touch him. He stays like that for a long, long time.

\---

A fishman touching her daemon isn’t quite as bad as a human doing it, Nami learns. The sensation is muted, like there’s something buffering it, but it’s still there.

It’s very much still there, and Nami and Aquilo do their best to avoid it, because most of the fishmen won’t make the effort.

Once, he would always run beside her, together, but separate. Now, they’re always touching.

He’s scared, every moment they spend near the fishmen, is always perched on her shoulder or wrapped around her arm, and if Arlong’s in the room, he always hides in her clothes, so not to be seen at all. Only when they’re at home with Nojiko does he dare step away from her.

Aquilo is scared. Aquilo cries at night, over their mother, over the villages, so Nami has to be the strong one. So Nami can’t cry.

They’ll just have to make it.

\---

Nojiko settles before she’s sixteen, and Bellemere should’ve been there. They should’ve held a celebration, maybe had a cake.

Instead, it’s just the two of them, just Nami and Nojiko, stumbling their way through Bellemere’s old chicken scratch recipes and singing what they remember of the songs that should be sung, four young voices in a too empty kitchen. The silence of two voices missing rings loud.

But it happens, even so, and it’s important.

Galanos settles as a large honeybee, and he dances along to the rhythm.

_Honeybee: Social, diligent. Weak alone, but will never give up, given support and friendship._

He seems right at home when he buzzes between the flowers of the orange grove, and Nami wishes often that Aquilo could settle as the same, that she could get proof that she still belongs here, in the only home she’s ever had, but she knows it’s unlikely.

Aquilo doesn’t take insect forms often anymore.

More and more, he’s a bird. He’s a sparrow or a hummingbird at Cocoyashi, small enough to hide in her pockets, a hawk or a crow when they’re far away at sea and he can dare spread his wings and leave her side, if only for a moment.

She’s fourteen, not even fifteen yet, when she comes home after some time away and his shape stays unshifting on her shoulder. His long tail feathers shimmer green in the sunlight, and the black and white of his wings is unmistakable.

_Magpie: Clever, ruthless. A trickster and a thief, willing and able to outsmart anyone, yet prefers the company of others._

\---

“Do you think, if I had a daemon, it’d be an octopus?” Hatchi asks one day.

It’s a day when most of the fishmen are away, out doing whatever it is they do when they’re not at Arlong Park, and it’s just her and Hatchi sitting at the harbour.

It’s one of those days she almost forgets she hates them.

“How should I know?” she answers.

Aquilo is sitting on the shoulder of hers that’s closest to Hatchi, stretching his wings in the sunlight, entirely relaxed. He wouldn’t do that with any of the other fishmen, but Hatchi is always careful not to touch him. Hatchi is safe. Sometimes they’d even make the stretch to call him good.

“I guess you wouldn’t,” Hatchi says, a little sad. “I’m just curious, you know? And it’s not like I can ask anyone else.”

Nami hums agreement.

Arlong hates daemons, and most of the fishmen follow his lead, looking at them with mocking eyes, but not all.

Nami has learned a lot about daemons over the last few years, looking for information out of a need to know more about the world she finds herself in. She knows something of how it works.

“You probably wouldn’t,” she says. “You never settled, right? And either way all fishmen are either fish or cephalopods, and daemons wouldn’t be that limited.”

“Oh yeah…” Hatchi says. He looks down at his hands, forlorn. “I guess I’ll never know.”

They sit there in silence for a while, and Nami doesn’t want to care, but Aquilo’s fidgeting, and she can sense his pity through the bond.

In the end, she relents, reaching out to pat Hatchi on the arm in an attempt at comfort. She was never great at that.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. There are humans out there without daemons too, you know?”

She’s not sure it really helped to cheer him up, but hey, at least she tried, and at the end of the day, she does still hate them.

\---

It’s such a rare condition, to be born without a daemon. Nami’s never met anyone like it, but it’s one of the things she’s read about, and the thought sticks with her.

So when Luffy falls out of the sky, practically on top of her, that’s where her mind goes.

(Somewhere far above, Naiah turns around, unhurt by the cannon blast, and goes to fetch their new crewmates.)

When Nami meets Luffy, he doesn’t have a daemon with him, and she wonders if he’s one of those very few.

“He’s probably just severed,” Aquilo whispers.

It’s the far more likely option. Nami has met survivors of traumatic severing before. It’s only a little less likely to see than missing limbs.

But Luffy doesn’t look severed. He holds himself with a careless confidence, so clearly entirely whole, without a trace of the characteristic twitchy nervousness to be seen. He looks whole, and she knows that you can’t always tell, but she can’t make herself believe there’s any of him missing.

She tries to convince herself it doesn’t matter, and maybe it doesn’t. It’s only weird when she lets herself think about it.

He’s a gullible idiot, once they get to talking, and she can read him like an open book.

Maybe it’s the lack of a daemon, again. Most people don’t quite know what to make of themselves around someone without a daemon, doesn’t know how to read emotions if there isn’t a daemon to look to, so maybe he’s never needed to be careful with it. Nami has had enough practice that it’s no problem at all.

He doesn’t see it coming when she decides to use him to get an in with Buggy’s crew. It works perfectly. Probably.

Buggy himself is an imposing figure.

One would think the clown aesthetic would make him seem a little silly, but in person, all it serves to do is make Nami feel out of her element. He accepts her deal almost too easily, and he grins like he knows something she doesn’t, lounging in his chair like it’s a throne.

His daemon, Careena, perches on the roof above him, where she can see everything that happens in the group of pirates and most of the town besides, a large scarlet macaw, just far enough away from him that it’s uncanny.

_Scarlet macaw: Clever, obvious. A striking figure that draws the eye and holds the attention, will hold their own in a fight, but will not seek one out without reason._

Not just uncanny, she realizes. Straight up unnatural. Why wouldn’t a man who can survive being split into pieces also be able to separate his daemon entirely from himself with no real damage done?

It wigs her out. She keeps glancing up at the sky, expecting to see red wings silhouetted against the sun any moment. The daemon could be anywhere, and there’s no way she’ll believe he died unless she sees proof for herself.

She doesn’t even want to think about the infamous bounty hunter turned pirate who is here as well, now. Between Zoro, Luffy, Buggy and whatever creatures Buggy has on his crew, this town is far too full of monsters.

Zoro at least has a daemon, but they _are_ severed.

It’s hard to tell with him as well. No signs of the symptoms that come with traumatic severing. It was intentional, careful and skilfully done, if she has to guess, barely noticeable, but he and Bite got much farther away from each other in the mad scramble to escape than should be possible, and Nami noticed.

Monsters. Monsters and crazy people, all of them.

So why does she care?

Why does she want to care?

Aquilo digs his talons into her shoulder and makes her hand over the key to Luffy’s cage, because it’s the right thing to do, in a way that tying him up in the first place decidedly wasn’t.

It’s… _really_ not her fault the key gets eaten by a dog.

Such things happen. It turned out fine in the end, anyway. Somehow.

And then they’re facing Buggy again.

Or at least the idiots are facing Buggy. Nami is robbing everyone blind as best she can, but she watches a lot of it go down.

She watches as the weird acrobat pulls every dirty trick in the book and some not in the book on Zoro while his annoying little monkey daemon jumps around Bite’s head and taunts her. Watches as Bite snaps, “You want to play dirty? Fine!” then locks her jaws around the monkey’s paw and pulls, and pulls, until the acrobat can’t even get close to Zoro without falling over in pain, and Zoro uses the opening to take him down in a single strike, so quick it seems effortless. It makes Aquilo shudder and press himself close to her neck.

Nami goes off to look for treasure, and when she comes back with her arms full, Luffy and Buggy are in the middle of a fight, devil against devil, a mess of limbs attached and not that doesn’t make sense, and above, Careena’s wings are red against the blue sky. She useless as anything but a lookout, with no target for her to fight.

Until she decides to make Nami her target. Or, more accurately, Aquilo, perched on Nami’s shoulder.

She’s high up and far away, and Nami has a long time to notice what’s about to happen, but it doesn’t help. Fancy plumage or not, Careena is far larger than Aquilo, her claws are far sharper, and in a dive, she moves much faster than Nami can run.

It’s not a fight Aquilo can win.

And then a cannonball falls from the sky.

But not a cannonball. Another bird. Another daemon, far larger again than Careena is, and far more solid.

The huge albatross daemon crashes into Careena with pinpoint accuracy and devastating speed, smacking them both into the ground to the sound of crunching bird.

The albatross bounces. Careena does not. She stays down, and on the other side of the square, Buggy screams.

His torso zooms across the square, and he picks his dazed daemon up, shrieking, “WHAT THE FLASHY HELL WAS THAT?”

And Luffy laughs and says, “Naiah,” and beans him on the nose, also from across the square.

And the albatross, Naiah, _Luffy’s daemon_ , folds her huge wings and laughs as well.

“Told you he was severed,” Aquilo whispers.

Nami looks at Luffy’s stretching limbs and says, “No, I think he’s just a monster.”

The fight goes on.

Careena gets her wits back, and when she attacks again, it’s in pieces, a wing here, a talon there, and Naiah is grounded, too large and clumsy to take off while she’s under attack, can only snap back with her beak.

Luffy has his hands full with a hundred pieces of Buggy flying in all directions, and no one is looking at Nami.

And Nami remembers the rope she carries with her, and Aquilo takes one end of it and takes off, helping her loop Buggy in, one flying limb at a time.

Luffy blasts Buggy away, leaving most of him behind, and Careena squawks loudly, pulls herself together, and flaps away after her human, disappearing towards the horizon.

And then there’s just Luffy, Nami, a bag full of treasure and a reasonably unconscious Zoro.

“So,” Nami says, looking at Naiah, who’s now shaking her ruffled feathers back into place. “You _do_ have a daemon.”

“Yeah, she’s Naiah!” he says, and then he tells Naiah, “This is Nami and Aquilo. They’re our navigator!”

“Oh cool!” says Naiah.

“Like hell I am!” says Nami, but they’re not listening.

Luffy crouches next to his daemon and asks, “You wanna fly again?” and Naiah shakes herself off one last time and says, “I’m kinda tired,” spreading her wings just a little.

He picks her up and drapes her over his shoulders like a huge, unwieldy backpack, carrying a bird a third his size like she weighs nothing, and she tucks her head against his neck and seems to fall asleep.

Then he picks up Zoro, and Nami can’t tell if he’s touching Naiah, carried like that, but he must be. He must be, at least a little, but Luffy doesn’t seem to care, and even Bite doesn’t react much, other than giving them a weird look, though that’s possibly because she’s barely awake enough to stay on her feet herself. She just trots off at Luffy’s heels.

Nami doesn’t know what to make of them.

They leave Orange Town at a sprint, running from people whose livelihoods they just saved, and Nami goes with them.


	4. Usopp and Veritessous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna be honest, I don't actually know when, canonically, is the average age for a daemon to settle at. It's supposed to be the moment you stop being a child, but of course there's never just one such moment in real life and you could argue the logical time is anywhere from very early teens to your early twenties.
> 
> In this fic I have sixteen/seventeen as the most common, with a year or so outside that range not being _un_ common, for the most part because it makes sense for the plot.

“This is a bad idea, Usopp,” Veritessous says, again and again and again.

“It’s alright, we’ll be fine, Tessa,” says Usopp, and does it anyway.

They’re never fine.

Or at least that’s what Tessa claims. He says she’s overreacting. Things only go badly wrong _sometimes_. Most of the time, everything goes perfectly fine.

“This is a really, really bad idea,” she says, buzzing around his head as a housefly when they sneak into the house of one of the villagers, looking for bottles and cans to use for target practice.

“It’s fine,” he says. “We’re a brave pirate. Even if he _does_ notice, he can’t get us!”

“We’re not, though. We’re just a kid.”

The owner of the house does notice them, of course, but they run and they get away, so he’d say they did good, even if Tessa doesn’t agree.

“This is the _worst_ idea,” says Tessa, as Usopp looks for a way to sneak through the hedge to the mansion.

They’re always arguing.

They’ve been arguing for as long as Usopp can remember, since before Mom died, even. Sometimes, he wonders if the first thing Tessa did when they were born wasn’t to bite his nose for screaming too loud.

Usopp likes to think he’s a strong, fearless pirate captain, ready and willing to face the whole world at once. Tessa always there, though, ready to remind him that they’re just a kid with nothing going for them.

Usopp wants to fight and she yells at him to _run, dammit_. He calls her a chicken and she shifts feathers for herself just to spite him and says it’s better to be a living chicken than a dead lion.

They’re always fighting each other, but in the end, that’s okay. When push comes to shove, she’s always right there with him.

The whole way from the coast to the village every morning, she tells him he’s being an idiot, that he’s just annoying everyone and some day they’re gonna get tired of him, and then what’ll he do? They’re all he has, and he’s ruining even that. But the moment they reach the village, she’s with him anyway, yelling about pirates and laughing when he says it’s all a lie.

She hisses angrily at him all the while as he sneaks up to the mansion, sitting on his shoulder as a beetle so that she can talk directly into his ear about how stupid he is and how they’re gonna get in trouble, but then they spot Kaya and Ephemerial through the window, and Tessa shifts into something bigger and braver-looking, to back up his storytelling.

They make Kaya smile and Ephemerial laugh, and as they’re sneaking out, two hours later, Tessa admits he was right. It was worth it.

Tessa doesn’t argue much about them sneaking into the mansion grounds after that. Only a little, when he skimps on work to do it or takes extra risks, such as sneaking through when they might be spotted by the asshole hyena-daemoned butler.

They argue about everything, but not about this. Sometimes she says it’s the only good thing he does with his life, and he argues back that hanging out with the kids is totally worth something, and the village would be bored out of their minds without him anyway, but he agrees that it’s probably the most important.

So they keep it up, until Kaya becomes a treasured friend, until Ephemerial becomes Emmer, and she starts calling Tessa Tessa, instead of Veritessous.

Usopp tells stories and watches Kaya’s laughing face, and Tessa acts them out and flitters around Emmer, where he’s a sparrow on the windowsill, a butterfly in Kaya’s hair.

One day they knock on the window, and Emmer is a white dove, and something feels different.

_Dove: Resourceful, docile. Often treasured and beloved, belongs faithfully to a home, but as all birds, longs for freedom._

“Eh? You settled!?” Usopp exclaims when she tells him. “Congrats! That’s awesome! That really suits you. Did you have a celebration?”

Kaya sighs, resting her head on the windowsill and running her hand over Emmer’s feathers, to which he purrs in response.

“Doves are domesticated birds, you know?” she says. “They might be allowed to fly, but they’re meant to stay nicely in one place where people can keep an eye on them. So I guess it’s true that it fits me.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Usopp says. “I mean, there’s lots of wild doves too, and they’re real cool birds. They don’t care what anyone thinks of them, just set up their nests anywhere, no matter what anyone says.”

“Ah, yes, pigeons. The rats of the sky,” says Kaya, but she’s smiling as she says it.

Usopp huffs. “I’ll have you know pigeons can be fierce warriors.”

Tessa hops onto his head in grey-speckled pigeon form and spreads her wings. “Why, once we met a pigeon who took down a whole battleship all on his own!”

Kaya giggles, which is the only thing that matters.

Tessa hops down to Emmer’s side and asks sotto voce, “Did you have a celebration, though?”

“Well…” Emmer says, shrinking into himself a little. “The cook made a cake and Merry and the rest of the servants sang some songs, but we’ve been pretty sick lately, so we haven’t really been able to have a proper celebration.”

“That’s not right,” says Usopp. “You deserve a proper party. You should’ve gotten a ball big enough for the whole village to join. They should’ve put on a parade! Set up a journey on a ship to see all the islands close by!”

He stops abruptly at the sight of her face, momentarily twisted in pain and grief, and it hits him that what she deserves most of all is to have her parents here to see this.

Tessa lands on his shoulder and hits him with a wing, muttering, “Dolt,” under her breath, which is warranted.

“Hey,” he says, and then he pauses, not sure if he’s fucked it up already. “Do you want to hear the story of that pigeon?”

Kaya sniffs and wipes her eyes, pressing Emmer close to her chest, and she nods and says, “Yes please.”

He can’t smooth over her pain, no matter what he does. He knows that certain holes stay open. But he can tell her stories, take her away to other places for a while, if only in dreams, and so he does, and Tessa does sound effects and picks up the thread when he loses it and makes sure to keep her entertained.

It's only a few months later that things change again.

Usopp gets up and eats breakfast, and Tessa sits at his side as a hare. He goes out to the horizon as he always does, looking out and imagining he’s keeping watch for approaching threats, and she stands tall on the back paws of a hare and watches as well, though she’s less likely to entertain the illusion. He runs towards the village, yelling about pirates, and she follows at his heels as a hare, berating him.

And she doesn’t shift anymore.

_Hare: Fast, fearful. Quick to run and hard to catch, but will fight viciously if pushed into a corner._

“Seriously?” he asks.

She shrugs her little hare shoulders and says, “It would’ve happened sooner or later anyway.”

“Yeah, but why _this_? Why not something cool, like a wolf or a rattlesnake or something?”

“That might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever said,” she replies.

Kaya notices before anyone else. His pirate crew would’ve, probably, but they don’t question him much, and he doesn’t mention it, but Kaya notices.

“Did you celebrate?” she asks, when he confirms that they’ve settled.

He scratches his head sheepishly and says, “Well, I haven’t really told anyone.”

“Why not?”

He shrugs, trying to play it off. “I mean, it’s not that important. And who would I tell, anyway?”

“He thinks it’s embarrassing,” says Tessa.

“I do not. And anyway it’s just a thing that happens eventually. Not like anyone cares.”

“I care,” says Kaya. “You should’ve had a parade.”

He laughs in mortified surprise that she even remembers he said that. “I don’t think there are even enough people in the village to make a parade.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it,” she says. “This form suits you, by the way.”

Usopp glances down at Tessa sitting at his side. “Thanks. I know I’m a coward at heart.”

“You’re really not,” says Kaya softly, then wistfully, “You know, my mother used to say hares are the messengers of the fairies. If you fight them, you’ll get cursed.”

“I think that’s jackalopes,” Usopp says.

“Jackalopes are just hares with extra bits, aren’t they?”

He laughs and pats Tessa’s decidedly antler-less head. “Sure, I guess that’s true.”

Kaya looks at him, and her smile fades. “Usopp, look, I… I get it if you don’t want to celebrate. I didn’t either, really, but I think you should still get the songs.”

“Who’d sing them, though?” he asks, and he’s not sure he’s ever been this honest before. It hurts.

“Just… don’t laugh,” she says, and she’s blushing. And then she takes a breath, and sings.

He’s awestruck.

He doesn’t know the words. He’s never known the words, even though he should, but he barely remembers to hum along, and Emmer lands between him and Tessa, nestling up to her and singing too.

They miss most of the notes. Usopp is a half-decent singer, but his throat is closing up, and Kaya has to stop three times for the coughing she can’t hold back, and it’s just the two of them, just four voices on a lawn. It sounds terrible. It’s better than he ever could’ve imagined.

He wonders if Kaya’s wavering voice sounds anything like his mother’s would, were she around to sing this for him.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Emmer’s wingtip brushes Usopp’s fingers on the grass, almost by accident, and neither of them mention it.

Just under a year later, pirates _do_ come to Syrup Village.

The morning is going into day, and Usopp is hanging out with Pepper and Carrot, Tessa bumping noses and exchanging playful slaps with Piper and Dacus, both in rabbit shape for the occasion. (Piperiset and Daucusous, but the boys have been friends for more than long enough.)

It’s just a normal day, and Onion and Cepa running up screaming doesn’t change that. They do that a lot. (Caepanic. Goat form, at the moment. Sometimes, they just call her Panic.)

“Pirates!” Onion yells. “Pirates are coming! We’re all doomed!”

“Oy oy, we did that bit already,” says Usopp.

“No I mean it! They’re real pirates!”

And that… that’s not something Usopp ever expected to hear. They’re a small, backwater island with nothing on it. Pirates don’t _come_ here.

“We can’t fight real pirates,” Tessa says. “Usopp, we can’t. We have to go tell someone, and get help!”

“That… That… Did they… look strong?” he asks Onion.

“I don’t know. They’re just three guys.”

“Just three?” Tessa asks.

“Onwards, men! To victory!” Usopp calls, and runs for the coast.

Tessa swears under her breath, but doesn’t immediately argue. She wants to see what this is about as well.

They are just three guys, like Onion said. Well, two guys and a girl, and the boats Onion said carried pirate flags on their tied-up sails are little more than dinghies, but they don’t look weak.

The first guy carries way too many swords at his side, and the daemon trotting after him and yawning does so with all her terrifying teeth. She’s a wolf so large she must weigh more than Usopp. The second guy looks harmless, but he doesn’t have a daemon at _all_ , and looking at him gives Usopp a sick feeling in his stomach. He’s never seen that before.

The girl looks more normal, her magpie daemon perched on her shoulder with practiced ease, but she stands beside the two guys like it’s normal, and Usopp doesn’t want to mess with her either.

He hasn’t even decided what to think before the swordsman spots them, and his crew abandons him in haste.

“Usopp, we should go,” says Tessa. “I don’t like this. We can’t handle this. We need to run.”

“Hell no,” says Usopp, and goes to face the pirates.

Twenty minutes later, all four of them are eating at Meshi. The pirates called him out on all his lies easily, which made Tessa grumble and eventually shout at him, which in turn made the pirates laugh, but luckily for Usopp, they’re not bad people.

He brings them to the restaurant and gets to learn their names.

“I’m Luffy. I’m gonna be king of he pirates,” says the guy in the straw hat. The one without a daemon.

Usopp’s still a little creeped out by him, but is starting to get used to it, and he likes him. That’s how Usopp introduces himself some days. It’s an admirable level of boasting.

“Zoro,” says the swordsman. “She’s Bite,” nodding down at the wolf daemon lying at his feet. Tessa sits next to her for lack of space, and it’s painfully obvious Bite could eat her without chewing.

“Weird name,” Usopp notes.

Zoro raises an eyebrow.

“Never mind.”

The girl sighs. “I’m Nami, and this is Aquilo. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise!” Usopp says. “And I’m the great Captain Usopp! And Veritessous. Around here, we’re the guy worth talking to.”

“That’s a mouthful of a name,” says Nami, glancing at Tessa.

“Well, my friends call her Tessa.”

Nami looks shocked, almost offended. “Why would you _nickname_ a daemon? That’s the rudest thing I’ve heard.”

That leaves Usopp lost for words. “I… what? I mean, everyone does that, around here. Only with friends, but always, then.”

“Cool. Never mind all that,” Luffy says. “We came here ‘cause we need more crew and a better ship.”

It efficiently drags the conversation away from daemon nicknames, and it hits Usopp a few minutes later that maybe it was on purpose. Maybe they never should’ve been talking about daemons around the guy who doesn’t have one.

Not long after that, Tessa tugs at his pant leg and gestures for the clock, and he excuses himself and goes to sneak up to the mansion again.

There’s been days Kaya’s welcomed him into the mansion itself, and they’ve talked over tea and cookies while the rain falls outside or snow covers the ground, but usually, he can only sit by the tree outside her window, hoping to avoid the shit-jacket butler.

He doesn’t mind it. Especially not today, when the sky is clear and the grass is dry, but he’ll never mind it. Not when he gets to make her smile.

And she really smiles today, the moment she sees him, Emmer flapping down to land at Tessa’s side as soon as they’re in range.

“Do you have a story for me today?” she asks.

And of course he does.

Only a little while later, the pirates come crashing through again, closely followed by the boys, and then shit-jacket shows up anyway, likely attracted by the noise, and the moment is gone forever.

Things go from bad to worse gradually but rapidly. The butler starts talking shit, making a show of protecting Kaya, but he makes Usopp’s blood boil and Tessa’s ears lie flat against her back. The hyena daemon Usopp still doesn’t know the name of is snickering in the back, hiding her bared grin behind the butler’s pant leg.

Then they insult his father, and he boils over, his fist hitting the man’s face before his thoughts catch up with him.

He doesn’t regret it, either. Not when the butler keeps spitting poison. Not when his daemon smiles in sharp-toothed threat at Tessa. Not when they’re stepping on every button Usopp has.

He’s so angry it hurts.

He’s so angry he’s not even scared. Even Tessa doesn’t bleed fear, only more anger and hurt, and he’s going to punch the butler again, needs to get that conceited look off his fucking _face_.

“Stop it!” Kaya shouts, and the pain in her voice cuts straight through like nothing else ever could. “No more violence, please. I’m sorry, Usopp. Klahadore really isn’t a bad person.”

She’s crying. She’s crying, and he can’t fix it. Not when it’s his fault.

It’s not his fault. The butler’s the one who started it. But it also is.

“Kaya,” Tessa begs. “Emmer, we didn’t….”

“C’mon, Tessa,” Usopp says, walking away.

It’s the best he can do for her, now.

Tessa hesitates, follows behind him but looks over her shoulder every other step, trying to catch Emmer’s eyes. He can feel her through the bond, hurt and betrayal and residual anger, echoing his own.

The long walk through the outskirt forests of the island to the coast clears their mind a little, cools the anger off and leaves the hurt like a sheet of frozen pins inside.

“You shouldn’t have punched him,” Tessa says.

“I couldn’t just let him _talk_ like that. He was practically begging for it. You were angry too!”

“You still shouldn’t have. It was stupid and rash.” She hops up ahead of him, and then stops, sitting still and letting him pass her before she follows again. “Do you think she believed him? About us?”

Usopp doesn’t know what to answer for a good while.

“Kaya knows us,” he lands on eventually, as they sit down to look out over the sea. “They know us. They’ll know what’s true, even if the butler lies.”

“I’m worried,” she says, and he can’t shake it either.

He doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what to feel, so they just sit there, looking out to sea and seeing nothing.

And then Luffy is suddenly there, popping out of a tree and scaring the shit out of both of them.

“Where the hell did _you_ come from!?”

“Your dad’s Yasopp, right?” says Luffy instead of answering. And….

Luffy is weird and intense and alone, daemonless, but he knows Usopp’s father.

Luffy talks, and it’s like all the poison the butler spouted washes away.

Usopp’s father is real. He’s out there, and he’s a great pirate, and Luffy is the proof of it.

Luffy _gets_ it, in a way no one else has before, and just talking to him gives Usopp a strength he didn’t know he was missing. The strength to not care about the butler’s words anymore. Truly not care. To stand up and speak his truth and have it feel true. He’s a pirate’s son, and he’s proud of it.

Luffy laughs. “I wasn’t sure you were related, though! Fonnie’s an antelope, nothing like Tessa is.”

No one’s ever used the nickname for Tessa that quickly before. It throws Usopp off for a second, leaves him stumbling over unformed words as he tries to speak, but… when he thinks about it, maybe they are friends already. It doesn’t feel bad.

What he says is, “I mean, they’re both fast prey animals.”

“That’s true!” Luffy says, laughing again.

Usopp didn’t even know what his father’s daemon was before now. To know that they’re the same kind means more to him than he expected.

And Luffy doesn’t actually seem to mind talking about daemons, so maybe it’s fine if he asks.

He sits back down on the grass. “So, do you… not have one?”

“Huh? No I’ve got Naiah,” says Luffy. “Wanna meet her?”

Usopp blinks. “Uh, yeah. Definitely.”

Luffy grins so wide his face must hurt and closes his eyes for a few seconds. Then he stands up, looking out towards the sea.

He takes a step back and holds his arms out as if to catch something.

And then _something_ zooms around the coast and smacks into him, bowling him over hard enough to break ribs. A bird at least the size of him, with a longer wingspan than Usopp has ever seen.

Luffy sits up, laughing, his arms full of bird-daemon, and says, “This is Naiah!”

“What the hell,” Usopp breathes.

“Uh, hi?” says Tessa, poking her head out of a bush she’s hidden in.

And the giant bird, Naiah, folds her wings and laughs. “Hi!”

“They’re Yasopp’s kid!” Luffy says.

“That’s cool! This place is pretty remote and boring.”

Usopp isn’t really listening. He looks from Naiah to Luffy, from Luffy to Naiah. “Are you… Are you cut?”

Cut. _Severed_. It’s something Usopp’s only heard of in horror stories. It usually kills you immediately, but sometimes, under rare circumstances, you can survive.

But Luffy laughs and says, “Nah, that’s Zoro. Naiah just likes to fly.”

“What?”

“Oh yeah, I was doing that,” Naiah says, folding her neck all the way backwards so she can look Luffy in the eye. “Got some stuff I wanna see. Help me out?”

“Sure!” says Luffy, and he stands up again, holds his daemon like a giant ball, and throws her far, far into the sky.

Usopp flinches hard, grabbing for Tessa. It’s the most horrifying thing he’s ever seen.

Luffy, however, doesn’t react at all. He just grins, shading his eyes, and far above, his daemon unfolds her wings to catch the breeze and disappears against the sky.

“How can you _do_ that?”

“Huh? Oh I’ve got a devil fruit,” says Luffy. He looks down below and frowns. “Hey, isn’t that the asshole butler?”

It is. Right below the cliff is the asshole butler, as well as a weird guy with a puffin daemon who calls him _Captain Kuro_. And any thoughts about Luffy’s daemon fade in favour of this.

Only a few minutes later, nothing else matters. They’re going to kill Kaya. They’re going to attack the village.

Luffy takes a fall he can’t possibly survive.

Usopp runs.

Tessa runs beside him this time, not arguing a bit, and it’s different, so wildly different from how they usually run, it takes them by surprise when no one believes them.

“What did I say?” Tessa says as they turn and run towards the mansion, warnings ignored. “What did I _say_ about the lies? I told you it was a bad idea!”

“I had no way to know this was gonna happen!”

“Because you never _think_!”

“You played along!”

“I wasn’t gonna abandon you!”

Getting into mansion grounds is easy, he’s done it a thousand times, but it doesn’t help.

Even after getting chased out of town by angry villagers, for some reason, he expected Kaya to believe him. Expected her, at least, to know the difference between truth and lie, know he’d never want to hurt her.

He’d hoped.

But she doesn’t believe him. She doesn’t trust him now. She cries, like he’s the one betraying her, and Emmer hides behind the windowsill.

Tessa has to bite one of the guards’ dog daemons to avoid being restrained. Usopp has his slingshot.

There’s a gunshot, a stinging pain in his arm, and he runs.

He’s always been a good runner. He can outrun anyone living on this island with ease, but running away from the people chasing him from Kaya’s mansion is one of the hardest things he’s ever done.

He’s terrified, leaving her in a house with that man, but there’s nothing he can do.

Nothing at all. Nothing but run, teeth gritted, arm burning with pain as blood seeps through his wrist guard.

A shadow flashes over him and he looks up and there’s… Naiah. Flying above, perfectly alive. She moves her wings just barely and looks down at him as she passes by.

Then there’s Luffy, unharmed, alive, a little confused.

Usopp is too upset to be properly relieved, too torn up and hurt and scared to make sense of anything, inside or outside his head, but he sees the kids, and he thinks of gunshots and angry voices, and the only thing he knows is that he can’t let them get dragged down with him.

He explains the situation to Luffy and his friends afterwards, when they’ve gone somewhere they won’t run into anyone.

He explains because they wouldn’t leave him alone if he didn’t, since Luffy heard everything as well, and because he needs to say it out loud for it to be true. He can’t let the pirates get to the village, and so he has to fight.

It’s only when he’s done talking it feels like something’s missing.

“You aren’t gonna tell me I’m being stupid?” he asks Tessa.

And Tessa is curled in on herself, shivering in fear, but she says, “No. Of course we have to fight.”

\---

He would’ve died in that fight if Luffy and Zoro and Nami hadn’t decided to help, but he still would’ve tried, and that means something.

Hare daemon or not, when the chips fall, he’s not just a coward.

\---

When the fight ends, he lies on his back in the woods for a while, beaten and bloody and utterly exhausted, and entirely sure of one thing.

“I think it’s time we leave this place,” he tells Tessa, and again, she doesn’t argue.

And again, they’re saved by Luffy and his friends, their crew, now. Because they most likely would’ve died if they actually set out in a small boat on their own, but they don’t. They sail away from their home island together with their crew, on a gorgeous ship called the Going Merry, and they’ll be just fine.

Kaya’s standing on the coast, waving as they leave, and Usopp waves back until she disappears in the distance, and for a long time after that, a spot on his face tingles with warmth.

_“Don’t try to stop me,” he tells her._

_“I won’t,” she says, smiling, and then she steps closer._

_And in a movement between them so small and quick he’s sure no one else can see, Emmer hops from her shoulder to his and presses a feathery head to his cheek. “But promise you’ll come home too, okay?”_

_It’s all he can do not to fall on his ass in surprise as she blushes bright red and pulls her daemon back._

_“I had a feeling you’d be leaving, after this.”_

_“O-Oh…” he says, a hand on his burning cheek. “Well. Well, it’s not like you could’ve stopped me from going anyway.”_

_“Don’t listen to him, he’s lying,” says Tessa, and in passing, she brushes just barely up against Kaya’s leg. “We’ll come home someday, and tell you about everything we’ve seen.”_

The Gecko Islands disappear over the horizon behind them, and Usopp turns his eyes to the future ahead.


	5. Sanji and Ensoleille

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On animal symbolism... I'm no good at it. I have a biology degree, so the first thing I think of when I think of animals is never symbolism. But for a fic like this it's important, so I'll do my best.
> 
> In-universe, what animal a daemon settles as is based partially on that animal's real-life attributes and partially on how the person in question thinks about the animal in question, as well as the person's own attributes, mostly real but some perceived. For example, owls might not actually be that smart, but if someone grows up in a culture where owls are a big symbol of intelligence, and they're a very intelligent person, their daemon might settle as an owl even so.
> 
> This means you can get very different people living in different places having their daemons settle as similar animals without that being a contradiction.
> 
> Though you have to wonder what might happen to someone whose perception of themself or of the animal their daemon settles as changes drastically later in life....

Daemons are a liability.

Or at least that is the conclusion Judge comes to, as he ponders the design of his perfect creation. Daemons are vulnerable in a way the human body doesn’t have to be, and the bond to them is too fragile and too dangerous.

Aciera bites his ear with her centipede fangs for calling her useless, but he ignores her. She knows he’s right, after all. They’re strong, but there’s a limit to the human form, and they have to go beyond it.

Daemons are a liability, but they’re simple to deal with, in theory.

In those most productive years of working with Vegapunk, in the research frenzy of experimenting to decode the lineage factor, daemon manifestation was one of the first things they figured out.

It’s not hard to remove the part of someone’s lineage factor that makes them manifest their daemon. It’s just one tiny part. It’s simple.

In theory.

In practice, of course, it’s all much harder. They can stop a daemon manifesting, but they can’t remove _daemons_. Not without making the person practically brain dead.

Because all thinking beings have daemons, and it’s always possible to force those daemons to manifest, whether the person is human or not, and once a daemon has manifested, it will not de-manifest easily.

These are the thoughts running through his mind when his daughter is born.

He can do much with her. Can make her faster, stronger, nearly unkillable, but the small shifting spirit flittering around her that she will be dependent on for the rest of her life he can do nothing about.

But she’s a good enough template as a prototype, so he names her Reiju and leaves it to her mother to name the liability.

(The first time Sora wonders if she’s made a mistake in picking her husband is here, when he tells _her_ to name her daughter’s daemon. Humans are for humans to name, and daemons are for daemons, or so she’s always been taught.)

(Later, she regrets not catching that mistake much, much earlier, but love, as they say, makes blind.)

(Ciele spreads his butterfly wings and names the child Brise.)

Reiju is born with her mother’s yellow hair, but it grows out pink, after a while. It’s a marker, so Judge knows the changes have taken.

She’s a young girl who likes her pretty dresses, and she loves it. It’s her favourite colour, and her father smiles when he sees it. He almost never smiles at her.

Brise looks over her shoulder as Sora brushes her hair, sees Sora’s smile fade and fingers twitch when they touch the line where her hair changes colours, and he tells Reiju he thinks it’s not supposed to be like this.

\---

The second attempt happens not long after.

Judge will do better with these ones, will start earlier.

But Sora complains.

She’s never complained before. Until now, she’s been right there beside him, working on different projects, yes, but always interested, always agreeable. Sometimes she’s even offered valuable input.

He married her for her mind, after all. Married her because he might never have worked out the more difficult parts of the cloning process without someone clever to bounce ideas off of, who could bounce back just as well.

Now, she’s telling him to drop it, that she wants no part of it.

She’s just being silly, of course. Something about having the girl around is clouding her judgement. She doesn’t have the authority to tell him what he can and cannot do.

So he goes through with it anyway.

Even he himself wouldn’t know how to counteract the changes he’s making to their children once they’re done, but she is oh so clever, and she tries, and nearly kills herself in the attempt.

He doesn’t know whether to be angry at her for trying to ruin his work or to mourn the fact that the only woman he’s ever wanted to spend time with has lost her mind like this.

He settles on resentment, later.

The boys are born, and three of them are just right. The first, second and fourth have the hair, to show the changes took, but the third has his mother’s locks, and there is a daemon. A small, shifting thing.

A failure.

Sora holds her children close, knowing she has died for them, knowing that will not save them, and Ciele names the only daemon there for him to name.

He names her Ensoleille.

\---

Sanji is small. Sanji is weak. Sanji is vulnerable.

But Sanji is not alone.

Ensoleille stays hidden, most of the time, curled up under his clothes in a futile attempt at trying to fit in with his brothers. It doesn’t help, but it does stop Yonji grabbing at her when he gets bored.

No one ever grabs at Brise, but that’s because Reiju would kill them for it. Sanji is too weak for that.

Sanji is weak, and Ensoleille is vulnerable, but he’s still happy he has her.

He’s happy he has anyone.

No one can sneak up on him when she’s a bee fly on the back of his shirt’s collar, keeping watch for people coming from behind. He doesn’t have to ask anyone for extra blankets at night if he’s cold and risk his father’s disappointment when she’s a kitten, purring him warm.

Ensoleille is small, always. Never larger than a rat. She’s a mouse, or a snake the size of a pencil, or a shimmering hummingbird. She’s a fluffy bee fly or a shining beetle or a soft and unassuming moth.

Once, visiting his mother, she sits beside Ciele in the shape of a monarch butterfly, copying him, and Sora laughs and says, “No, look here. They’re different, see? Ciele is a mimic, not a true monarch butterfly.”

Sanji has his mother too, but only sometimes, and she can never help.

She can’t help when his father finally gets tired of him and locks him up. No one helps. It’s just him and Ensoleille, and she can do nothing about the iron mask over his head.

“Sanji, I’m scared,” she says, curled around his neck as a tiny weasel, hoping for warmth. “I don’t think anyone’s coming.

He hugs her close and thinks she might be right.

Time stops making sense down there. He’s not sure how long it’s been, with just the two of them in their little cell, but someone _does_ come.

Reiju comes. Reiju and Brise.

And then.

Then they’re running. Sanji is running, and Ensoleille is at his back, with the ears of a bat to ensure no one follows them.

The crew of the orbit don’t find them until a day later, where they’re stowed away in the pantry. A woman with an arctic fox daemon curled around her neck nearly trips over him, and then she shouts very loudly in surprise, but after that, they let him stay.

They let him stay, and even agree to teach him how to cook, and no one mentions the fact that Ensoleille spends most of her time clinging to his neck.

They can hear people whispering, but no one ever _says_ anything.

It’s good. It’s… home, in a way. Less than sitting at their mother’s bedside was home. More than the cage in the basement was.

For two years, it’s the home they have, and it’s nearly enough to let them unwind.

No one’s coming after them. No one even cares that they’re gone. It’s fine. They’re safe. This is home now.

Ensoleille stays small and stays glued to him.

They’ve nearly begun convincing themselves they’re safe when once again they’re abruptly not.

Pirates attack, and Sanji isn’t going to let that go, not here, not now. He can’t lose everything again. He might be weak, but the crew tells him he’s much stronger than a child his age should be.

He remembers grabbing a knife.

He remembers the sky raging in echo of his own distress.

He remembers Ensoleille vibrating, a bumblebee at the hollow of his throat.

He remembers water, then nothing.

Nothing before he wakes up on a rock, with the pirate captain looming over him, and the pirate’s pelican daemon looking down from her perch on his shoulder.

And thus begins their first day of hell.

\- _Day 1_ -

“Is he really gonna let us starve to death while he takes most of the food?” Sanji grumbles.

“He _is_ a pirate.”

“Mhm. He’s just one guy. I bet we can take him if we have to. We’re small. He won’t even see us coming.”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to risk it. Let’s see what we can do with what we have?”

\- _Day 3_ -

“Damn. I’m hungry, ‘Leille.”

“I know. You’ll be fine. Hey, you’re strong. You’ll be fine.”

“I know, I know, but. It hurts.”

\- _Day 5_ -

“Sanji, it’s a ship!”

“Ooooy! Over here! Look over here! Heeeeelp!”

“Hellooooo! They can’t hear us! The thunder’s too loud!”

“Can’t you be something bigger?”

“I can’t! Sanji, I can’t!”

\- _Day 15_ -

“I’m so hungry.”

“Someone’ll have to come by soon.”

\- _Day 25_ -

“That- That was…”

“The last piece of bread.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dropped it. I’m sorry.”

\- _Day 30_ -

“I’m so hungry.”

\- _Day 35_ -

“I’m so hungry.”

\- _Day 40_ -

“I don’t want to die.”

\- _Day 45_ -

\- _Day 50_ -

\- _Day 55_ -

\- _Day 60_ -

“I don’t want to die either.”

\- _Day 65_ -

\- _Day 70_ -

“D’you think that old man is dead?”

\---

The old man isn’t dead.

He’s down a foot, and he’s barely alive, but he’s not dead. He saved Sanji’s life.

And they live. Somehow.

They survive.

\---

The old man’s name is Zeff. His daemon’s name is Glade. They’re going to build a restaurant.

There’s nowhere Sanji wants to be more than on that restaurant.

Even if someone handed him a map leading directly to All Blue right now, he probably wouldn’t have left. He owes Zeff too much. For the man’s leg, for his own life. For the kindness.

He’s never earned kindness like that.

Then Zeff starts teaching him how to _really_ cook, and now Sanji owes him even more.

His whole life is tied to this ship, and he’s willing and ready to give that much.

“Aren’t we lucky to be here?” he whispers to Ensoleille every night before they sleep, no matter how angry the day’s events might’ve made him.

“Mhm,” she agrees, and curls up in his hands and purrs him to sleep.

She’s still small, and still glued to him.

She always will be, he suspects.

But why did it have to be like this?

“Are you _sure_?” he asks again. “Does it have to be this?”

He’s sixteen, just barely, and curled up behind the door of the pantry. Ensoleille is on his knee, a few inches from his face, and she’s a bee.

She buzzes a little, a humming vibration that tickles through the fabric of his pants. “Yes. This is it.”

Sanji doesn’t like bugs.

And of course bug daemons aren’t _bugs_ , as such, but… it puts him in mind of Aciera, crawling up his father’s arm, all her many legs going tic tic tic. It almost reminds him of Ciele, fluttering at his mother’s side, but Ciele was more wings than legs, and so fragile.

It reminds him of Brise. Reiju wasn’t settled when he got away, but Brise was an insect more often than not, and he’s read the comics. They’re not as easy to get a hold of in this sea, but he’s seen them.

He doesn’t know if they’re accurate. They give his brothers daemons as well, but in the comics, they’re all mantises, and Brise is an orchid mantis. A mimic, like their mother. It seems right.

His brothers wouldn’t be mantises though, but bugs, certainly. Scorpions, maybe, or spiders, or multi-coloured hornets. Something terrible.

None of the soldiers had daemons either, and it’s only lately he’s realized how strange that was, but he feels he knows what they would be. They’re already an army of ants. Faceless, cruel, loyal to a fault.

“Couldn’t you at least be a bee fly again?” he asks. “That way, we’d be like….”

“We’re not a mimic, Sanji. I’m not a liar. This is who we are.”

_Honeybee: Kind, dangerous. Lives to serve the ones they love, too small to be feared, too strong to fear, and always too ready to self-sacrifice._

The door to the pantry opens. “Sprout. There’s work to be done. If you’re sneaking away to smoke, you do it on your free time and you don’t do it in the pantry.”

Zeff and Glade loom over them.

Sanji scrambles to his feet, self-consciously stuffing Ensoleille under the collar of his shirt. At least he’s not crying or anything stupid like that. “I _wouldn’t_ , you shitty old man.”

Zeff’s eyes narrow. “What’s gotten into you, brat?”

“Nothing.”

Ensoleille pokes her little head out from his collar and says, “We settled, that’s all.”

Zeff takes a step back, conveniently making space for Sanji to push past.

“I’ll go do that work now,” he says, moving to do so, but he’s stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

Zeff looks at him for a long moment, scowling out from under heavy brows. Glade is as always perched on his shoulder, and she leans her neck around his and seems to nibble on his ear, which he doesn’t react to at all.

Then he lets go of Sanji’s shoulder and pushes him towards the kitchen. “You go do that, brat.”

It’s a busy day that day, customers to fill the restaurant to the brim, and enough work to make Sanji almost forget about that morning, if not for the constant weight of a bee against his collarbone.

It means it surprises him, when the day is done, the restaurant is closed, and he walks back into the kitchen for an errand to find a party waiting for him.

It’s not a proper party, of course, but all the cooks are there and a table is set and they’ve baked a cake, somehow without him noticing.

Zeff must’ve done the baking, there’s no other way, but the hexagonal chocolate decorations are almost certainly Carne’s work, and the honey glaze it’s drowning in is one of the only things Sanji’s willing to admit Patty’s decent at, and it’s such a good cake.

He’s absolutely not going to cry, dammit.

But it’s so good.

\---

It’s a pretty normal day.

Sure, some idiot blew a hole in the restaurant with a misaimed cannonball and got roped into being chore boy, and sure, some marine swore to get them all in a ton of trouble, and sure, some notorious pirate made a ruckus, got fed and then left, but those are the sort of things that happen when you work on a floating restaurant that’s only legal because no one’s bothered to check if it’s _ill_ egal.

Zeff’s being unusually grumpy, all the waiters are gone and they’ll have to fix the hole in the roof as soon as possible, though, so the day’s still on the shittier side. It’d be a good help if the chore boy was at least marginally competent, but he’s not.

He breaks things and eats all the food and doesn’t have the faintest clue what he’s doing and he _doesn’t have a daemon_.

That last one isn’t technically a strike against him, but it makes Sanji twitch.

And it doesn’t help that he’s….

_Hey! Come join my crew!_

…He’s saying stupid things, and won’t take no for an answer.

“I do want to sail,” whispers Ensoleille from the inside of his shirt collar.

“We have a duty here.”

“I know, I know. I wouldn’t want to break that, but….”

But.

The chore boy is an idiot, and yet the lightness in his steps, the way he travels like no chains could ever tie him down, it’s alluring. It’s something Sanji’s never seen before. True freedom, maybe, if he had to put a name to it.

It’s stupid, and risky, and he has his duty to the restaurant, and so he tries to brush it off, but the thought sticks with him.

When he goes to sleep those nights, with Ensoleille cupped in his hands against his chest, he can’t bring himself to tell her they’re lucky to be where they are.

But he can’t go with the pirates and he won’t go with the pirates. He doesn’t even like them.

Well, okay, the woman with the magpie daemon is one of the most beautiful women he’s met in his life, makes his heart beat and Ensoleille buzz against his throat, and she would surely make any journey a delight, but _still_.

The captain is a daemon-less moron who doesn’t know the right side up on a frying pan, and he’d also have to deal with the hare-daemoned dumbass and the bastard with the giant wolf at his heels, and that’s not a big enough crew to survive anything. He’s pretty sure the two dog-daemoned bounty hunters are only tagging along, not joining for the long ride.

That Krieg Pirate, Gin, had a dog daemon too. A pitbull, if Sanji remembers his races correctly.

There are too many sea dogs out there, blindly following their masters into danger without a thought for their own survival.

There’s almost no dog daemons on the Baratie. No one works here if they haven’t been thrown out of at least three normal restaurants first. There are birds and cats and reptiles. Patty carries his catfish daemon in a tank on his back, and Carne’s porcupine is always seconds away from skewering someone.

None of them need to be dogs to be loyal. There’s no need for that blind, senseless kind of devotion when the loyalty has been earned.

Sanji isn’t going to go off to sea.

He’s not.

No matter how much he wants to. He has a duty.

The Krieg pirates deciding to attack them all certainly doesn’t weaken that resolve. If anything, it strengthens it.

And then the world’s strongest swordsman sails in like he owns this sea, his daemon perched above him as if she was a gargoyle designed to instil fear in everyone who sees her. And then the moss-brained swordsman walks up with a challenge, as if he doesn’t fear at all.

And Sanji gets his first look at the depth of ambition in this crew that wants him.

“When was the last time someone wanted us to come with them just because they liked us?” asks Ensoleille quietly, hiding under the hair at his neck.

Sanji doesn’t answer, because the answer is _never_.

The chore boy sends his crew (half dying, half terrified) away after the third who ran away, trusting them to find her and trusting himself to fight and catch up, and the faith he has is ridiculous.

It’s still somehow alluring.

The fight, at least, makes sense.

The small fry stream in like the plague of locusts they are, and Sanji kicks heads and bodies left and right, almost without thinking. Ensoleille buzzes against his skin, shooting out to sting at paws and snouts before returning just as fast.

Human against human, daemon against daemon, the way battles always go.

And in the middle of it all, the chore boy, _Luffy_ , goes up against Krieg and Krieg’s wild hog daemon all on his own.

Until very suddenly, he’s not alone.

He’s in a pinch, Krieg throwing explosions at him one after another, hitting him with attack after attack, each one enough to take out a normal person all on its own. The hog daemon is grunting and stamping, scoring deep slashes in the hard wood they’re standing on.

And then something comes around from above. A daemon crashes from the sky. A bird, almost as large as the hog daemon.

And she crashes right _into_ the hog daemon, sending it sliding across the wood and falling into the sea so Krieg howls in pain, and without a second’s hesitation, Luffy hits him hard enough to crack his armour.

It’s like he was waiting for it to happen.

Because he _was,_ of course.

Krieg sets off another explosion and yanks his daemon out of the water, yelling with pain and rage. He aims a kick at the bird daemon, and _Luffy_ flinches and punches at him in retaliation.

Because this is Luffy’s daemon, of course. This gorgeous bird who flies wherever she wants is Luffy’s daemon.

The image of true freedom.

The fight is over soon after, Krieg going down to a force he couldn’t possibly understand, that even Sanji is having trouble grasping.

Ensoleille buzzes against his neck as he sits at Luffy’s bedside, later.

The boy is asleep, snoring and covered in bandages, his huge daemon draped over him and sleeping just as deeply.

Sanji doesn’t know what to make of him.

Sanji and Ensoleille have the shortest bond they’ve ever seen, probably because they’ve always stuck so close to each other. She can barely move over a meter from him before things start hurting.

He doesn’t know where to even begin understanding someone like Luffy and his daemon, who stay so far apart for so long, like they don’t even need to be together to be one.

“If we were to sail…” says Ensoleille, letting the sentence hang unfinished in the air.

There’s no one else he’d rather leave with. He knows.

He wants to taste this kind of freedom.


End file.
